New Massport CEO hopeful about landing JetBlue for Worcester airport

Massport’s new CEO is optimistic that JetBlue Airways Corp. (Nasdaq: JBLU) will eventually land at the near-deserted Worcester Regional Airport after an enthusiastic meeting with JetBlue’s CEO a few weeks ago.

Massport chief executive Thomas Glynn tells me the head of JetBlue — David Barger — met with Glynn four weeks ago, and Barger was still talking about how impressed he was with the strong local support he saw for JetBlue in Worcester during a visit in August.

“They’re enthusiastic about trying to make it work,” Glynn says of JetBlue. “They think this is a great opportunity (but) they’re going to decide at the moment it makes sense to decide.”

The airport has been devoid of commercial flights since Direct Air filed for bankruptcy in March, putting more pressure on Massport to persuade JetBlue to expand to Worcester. Solving the Worcester problem will be one of the first major challenges that Glynn, who joined Massport in September, will have to tackle as CEO.

JetBlue is already the biggest player at Logan Airport, representing about one-quarter of the traffic there, and Glynn hopes to leverage that relationship by encouraging JetBlue to bring planes to Worcester.

If JetBlue does agree to Massport’s overtures, we might need to wait until at least 2014 to watch flights take off at Worcester. Glynn says the first flights most likely would be to Florida, and there would probably be more than one a day to ensure there’s enough business to support a critical mass of JetBlue employees and infrastructure.

The airport’s location within Worcester, however, is far from ideal. The facility sits on a hill on the city’s western outskirts, and is not exactly close to either I-290 or the Mass. Pike. Then there’s the fog issue that comes, in part, with being at a high elevation.

Glynn says Massport is really focusing on JetBlue as the airport’s marquee tenant, over making serious overtures to other airlines.

“From our standpoint, we couldn’t have a better potential partner out there,” Glynn says. “The airlines are (run by) businesspeople. If they start to see there’s a viable market there, other people may jump in. But I think they’ll let JetBlue take the lead.”